When a WordPress site breaks, the first hour decides whether it stays a bad hour or becomes a lost weekend. This hub collects the error-specific fix guides our team has written from real emergencies — ordered so you can go from symptom to fix without archaeology. Bookmark it before you need it.
The site is down right now
If everything is on fire, start with the first 30 minutes, in order — a triage sequence, not a panic list. The three most common total outages each have a dedicated guide: the white screen of death, “Error Establishing a Database Connection” and 503 Service Unavailable. For the newer message that replaced the classic WSoD, see fixing “There Has Been a Critical Error on Your Website”.
Locked out or half-broken
- Can’t log in: the wp-admin login loop — cookie problems, HTTPS mismatches, plugin collisions — with every escape route ranked.
- Everything 404s: every page 404s except the homepage — almost always a permalink/rewrite issue with a two-minute fix.
- Stuck in maintenance mode: the plugin-troubleshooting companion explains why it happens and how to escape.
- SSL warnings everywhere: mixed content after SSL — why browsers complain and the full fix.
The update that broke something
Updates are the most common self-inflicted outage. Read the critical error fix guide first, then every rollback option ranked to unwind the bad update safely. For the underlying discipline — finding the culprit instead of guessing — our plugin conflict diagnosis guide and the faster diagnostic method both work; the Query Monitor setup is the tool we install on every client site for this exact reason.
The errors nobody explains
Some failures produce messages that are technically accurate and practically useless: memory exhaustion fatal errors (find what is actually eating it), cURL error 28 timeouts, admin-ajax.php errors and timeouts, REST API 401/403 errors and emails that silently never send. Each guide names the usual suspects and gives a verification step, not just a settings page to click.
What should I do first when my WordPress site is down?
Check whether it is a hosting-level outage, then enable debugging and read the actual error before changing anything. Our first-30-minutes guide sequences this so you fix the cause instead of stacking changes.
How do I find which plugin broke my site?
Deactivate plugins in batches from the fastest-loading group, or use Query Monitor's hooks view if you still have admin access. The conflict diagnostic method finds the culprit in minutes rather than by trial and error.
Should I restore from backup or fix forward?
If the breakage is recent and the cause is known, fixing forward is faster. If the cause is unknown or the site is customer-facing revenue, restore the backup first and debug on staging.
Why does my site break after PHP version upgrades?
Deprecated functions and extension changes. Our PHP upgrade guide explains the break patterns and the fix order that prevents cascading errors.
Prevention beats every guide here: our staging-to-production checklist and the tested plugin stack remove most causes of outages before they happen. And when an emergency is bigger than a guide, contact us — emergency triage is part of our migration and maintenance work.
